This week I sat through “The Wizard of Lies” which is the HBO version of the Bernie Madoff’s 25 year run on a Ponzi scheme. This entire story is one of incredible non accountability, sheer ignorance on behalf of the SEC, FINRA and every other level of regulator in the industry. The Bernie Madoff story is one that is an outlier to the typical Ponzi schemes. The sheer length of his ongoing fraud is a massive indictment on the selectivity of the regulators on Wall St. Madoff was a total insider and as such he established a level of “good ole boys” credibility which allowed him to go unchecked for decades. The red flags and warning shots across the bow were available for any prudent regulator to see, it was however conveniently ignored with regularity.

It is easy to make the statement of how no one will ever be able to promulgate a fraud on the level Madoff did. Yet, as we speak there are probably at least 3 ongoing Ponzi schemes that have the red flags and warning bells going off, and are actively being ignored by regulators for any number of rationales. Will any ever reach the dollar amounts that Madoff did? Possibly not, but I am never surprised by anything that happens in the world of scams, fraud and predatory sales practices. Would anyone have believed the level of predatory sales manipulations and direct fraud committed by management at Wells Fargo? As long as there is hope, desire and greed in the world there will be scams, fraud and sales manipulations. It’s built into the psychological D.N.A. of victims.

Whatever story lines you see built on the Ponzi-schemes, stock frauds and other major frauds there is always a strong sympathetic bias towards victims. Sadly, all this does is help create more victims. As long as the financial victim continues to be a sympathetic soul we are simply enabling them to become systematically victimized with regularity and impunity. It’s time to help victims by exposing them to the harsh truth about their experience. They have culpability and with each Madoff or Stanford who comes along and pilfers their money the victim focuses on the poor me aspect of their shattered lives. My job is to work with victims on a regular basis and our work is to help clarify why victimization occurs.

If the why’s are discovered the events can be stopped and the conmen (includes women) can be stopped at the door and never gain traction with a potential mark (victim). When you are aware of the psychological triggers that occur in the process of being victimized you will be forever insulated from being a victim. As long as the people around you sympathize they will forever enable you. This enablement will directly lead to future financial victimization and you will be forever in the vicious cycle of being a victim.

The Madoff story displays the basic human behavior of those who are victimized. The vast majority never confront or discuss it as they suffer from pain, anger, embarrassment, shame and want to be forever anonymous. Then there is the minority who are driven by pain and anger while constantly seeking revenge. This group is not seeking to balance the books or find closure, they are purely motivated through anger, hatred and bitterness. They ultimately destroy all the good around them while pursuing their blinded hatred. This is displayed in the HBO version of Madoff. Presently it is 9 years since the exposure of Madoff’s scam and there still remains victims who are obsessed with revenge. It does no one any good and when you see how those people are impacted by their own hatred and bitterness you see the continuation of their victimization. The psychology of victimization is a fairly complicated process, without identification and healing the cycle of victimization will never end.

A very sad reality exists in that both the perpetrator and the victim have a sick connection. That connection is that neither is a sympathetic character. Both are perpetrators in the process of financial victimization. The painful reality is every financial victim had many, many opportunities to avoid involvement in the investment, purchase or business agreement. Each victim voluntarily participated, and many times they gleefully ignored every red flag or 6th sense call to walk away. When interviewed those who are willing to work through the psychology of the process all admit they heard that tiny voice in the back of their mind saying this is too good to believe. They also admit that they could have done more complete due diligence but simply relied upon a certain level of trust. This is how it always happens. Trust can never be taken in consideration of complete due diligence. Proof to this point is the fact in the Madoff deal where the regulators never made a simple call to the DTC to confirm that his investment advisory had an account. This was 2 years prior to the final fall of the Ponzi scheme. Why did the regulators ignore making a simple confirmation call that would have taken a couple of minutes? No one will ever have that answer, but it probably had to do with trust and credibility.

As CEO & Founder of the Advocacy Network I experience strong frustration in the knowledge that each and every day 1000’s of people are being financially victimized. For everyone we are able to help the others are being exponentially multiplied. What is most aggravating is the fact that almost ALL financial victimization could be eliminated with simple awareness, financial literacy education and consistently taking some self audits on personal beliefs, habits and values as to money. Kindly know that the Advocacy Network is committed to eliminating all forms of financial victimization through creating awareness, providing financial literacy education and helping people achieve financial independence.

In the following video Money in 3D I discuss the truth about a misunderstood concept: the time value of money. One of the key factors for the epidemic of financial victimization in America is the high impact of financial illiteracy. And the key element of financial illiteracy is the lack of awareness and understanding of the time value of money. It’s not a subject that is covered in our educational platforms. The little bit of financial education provided in the elementary and secondary education wouldn’t even fill a thimble.

It’s no accident that the education system directly refuses to provide financial literacy education. After all the government runs an economic platform that defies any logical fiscal responsibility and as such that fiscal irresponsibility requires the full support of the American public. Thus we are taught that there are basic tenets to follow economically and unfortunately like lemmings running to the cliff we do as we are told.

The basic economic life cycle that we are taught is work to earn, spend what you earn, borrow to enhance your life style and life experience, pay the loans and then go back to work and start all over again. The economic death spiral in this cycle is in the payment spoke. It is here that the banking industry control the economic plight of the public. The process is called AMORTIZATION and this is where the cycle of money continues to favor the bankers and lenders. It is here that you directly lose $100’s of thousands of dollars in future earnings which you pre-pay to the lenders. This includes you mortgage, auto loans, credit cards and now substantial education loans. We at actually borrowing to be educated to a level of financial illiteracy. Its an incredible shroud that we have been covered by. I don’t have time to go over the history of the fractionalized banking system and how it is controlled by directed government interference into the free market. But it is very safe to say we do not have a truly capitalistic economy, the free market has never been truly free since the establishment of the Federal Reserve. (A great book for your research is “How Privatized Banking Really Works” by L.Carlos Lara & Robert P. Murphy, I highly recommend this book which will open your eyes to the real workings of the banking institution in America and the rest of the global community).

But with all that clutter on the fringes of your economic life there is a series of financial solutions you can easily and very affordably institute, in fact the affordability is such that you CANNOT afford to ignore taking these steps. The video below is about Money in 3D and will hopefully give you a totally different perspective on the subject of making smart decisions about money.

The Advocacy Network is fully engaged in eliminating all forms of financial victimization, through creating awareness, providing financial literacy education and helping people attain financial independence.

The amazing unrecognized financial victimization is dooming 95% of our society to financial dependence. Sadly, the entire victimization could be avoided. For the last 50 years the insurance industry has been telling the 100 man story. It goes like this: For every 100 people starting at 25 after working for 40 years at age 65 the overwhelming majority 95% are either Dead, Dead Broke or Financially Dependent on Family, Friends or even worse the Government. This story was responsible for selling billions of dollars in life insurance over that timeline. And while the life insurance solution was and is still a viable and important piece of becoming financially independent it is not solving the primary cause of the financial victimization.

The genesis of the problem is the amortization of debt. The average American is losing a minimum of $100k over the lifetime of their debt service. These losses are hidden and painless so we never see it until its too late. Just like placing a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog would resist, but when you put a frog in a nice warm pot of water he gladly takes to the environment, and then its simply a matter of slowly turning up the temperature while the life is slowly ebbed from the frog and ultimately the frog is fully boiled.

Financially we are frogs, and the amortization of debt is our warm comfortable environment. Slowly all opportunity is slowly ebbed out of our future. The dollars that are taken from us in the form of ongoing interest payments which create not only the loss of money but the ultimate damage of lifelong opportunity cost. The money we lose is never in our possession to create future wealth with through the magic of compound interest and therefore we have a negative compound interest result which assures the resulting financial dependence. This cycle will continue to impact one generation at a time because the banks, financial institutions, hedge funds and all lending organizations thrive on the long term amortization of debt service payments. And we are willing participate because the financial literacy education we have received is a simple story of work to earn, spend, borrow and make your payments on time. Spend and pay on time. We have decided to gleefully take all of our future earnings to prepay today for material things. Take a 30 year mortgage for example. In the first 19 years of a 30 year mortgage you will prepay the majority of the interest, with a small fraction of the principal paid down, the last 11 years will pay off the vast majority of the principal. In the end you will have paid approx. 2.5 times the amount you borrowed. All the while people’s major concern is the interest rate at which they get the loan. Talk about a magic trick, its not the interest that robs you its the timeline you pay the interest over. When time is factored in with money that creates the magic known as compound interest and this magic can either bring you great wealth or it can rob you of any chance for the accumulation of wealth. Its a double edged sword and we have been indoctrinated and trained to use it against our best interests at all times in every financial decision we make.

My point for you here is while life insurance, annuities, retirement planning, investment vehicles are all very important financial solutions they become moot when you ignore the core principle of economic loss. The first solution is to STOP all losses and capture the money you willingly give away to the banks and financial institutions. That money is the capital you get to use to create the future wealth you need to be financially independent. If you don’t accomplish this you are never in the game, you are simply running on a treadmill or in this case a hamster wheel. Sure you save some money, then you invest some money, you set up retirement plans and yet you continue to make debt service payments which over time lose incredible sums of money that never get into your plans, its comparable to having internal bleeding, you are slowly bleeding to death and never know it until you cease to be. You took all the right steps to pursue financial independence but you never knew you were bleeding and thus unknown to you death was your only result. Stop the bleeding and then take the next steps in the strategy.

We have a financial solution that will stop the financial bleeding, open the door to a pathway for financial independence. This solution is the preventative medicine that makes financial independence achievable. You will still need to take additional steps along the pathway which will then assure you of becoming financially independent.

Watch this brief overview on this solution.

After go to www.trivesta.com/advocacybz and enjoy the testimonials, these are people just like you who have learned the key to opening the door to the pathway for financial independence. Then use the calculator to find out just how much you and your family will save and how much wealth you can create through that savings. Then you can call me with any questions or concerns.

To date the Advocacy Network has saved members approx. $7M. This has been accomplished through providing proactive protection against scams, fraud and predatory sales tactics. Our mission has been to eliminate all forms of financial victimization through creating awareness, providing financial literacy education and helping people achieve financial independence.

Recently I have been in discussions with several law firms who have decades of experience in helping financial victims recover portions of their losses. While I had previously come to believe that such chasing of past losses actually had a negative impact on future potential for victimization, I have most recently been educated on how there has been success in recovery of lost funds. Not only does this recovery have financial impact, it has been proven to provide emotional and psychological healing as well.

After taking the last 4 months to review research and compile due diligence on several law firms I have decided to establish the Advocacy Network referral network. We will provide all victims with the direct connection to successful law firms in the direct recovery of financial losses due to scams, fraud and predatory sales tactics.

This service will protect your anonymity, as the referral will be direct between the victim and the law firm. The Advocacy Network has and will continue to protect the identity of victims and never circumvent full confidentiality. We have consistently maintained complete confidentiality with over 12,000 members to date. The most difficult obstacle in financial victimization is the pain, anger, shame and guilt experienced by victims, this is the reason that less than 17% of victims ever report their losses and experiences. This has commonly created continuous victimization for those who have already been victimized. Our work has always been about protecting the best interest of those we serve.

The establishment of our present platform puts us in the best situation to now offer services that could be of great benefit to victims. My most important commitment was to limiting victimization by ensuring that people had the necessary awareness along with proper financial literacy education. In this manner prevention would be more valuable than recovery. Now, I feel that we can make a huge difference for prior victims by opening pathways for them to pursue their legal rights and attempt to get back some financial remuneration on their losses.

This can help provide financial, emotional and psychological healing which in the long run should make a massive impact on the entire concept of financial victimization.

So here is what we are rolling out: at our website www.theadvocacynet.com there will be a portal to request review of your specific loss and experience. There will also be a telephone contact to request referral. Our initial overview will help you identify what the referral should be and what the reasonable expectation of success can be.

Don’t hesitate to seek this assistance, as we guarantee you 100% complete confidentiality. You can also feel confident about our background and experience with financial victimization, you will not be alone by any means as there are literally 1000’s of financial victims on a daily basis.

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The Advocacy Network is a platform which blends education, information and premium services that prevent investors, consumers and businesses from becoming victims to scams, fraud and predatory sales tactics.